The Stranger Who Masturbated on the Nudist Beach

I needed three days away from everything. I wanted to breathe without the noise of my phone, without the half-finished conversations with Marcela, without the feeling of living on pause. So, at the end of November, I booked a room at Bahía Quemada, a little nudist beach hotel I had known for years.

I arrived on a Thursday around noon. The room was the same as always: white walls, a ceiling fan, and a direct view of the sea. I dropped my backpack without unpacking, changed quickly, and went down to the sand with a cap, sunscreen, and a book I knew I wasn't going to open.

The beach was almost empty. Two older couples were reading beneath the palapas in the distance, and a lone man was dozing facedown near the water. I settled onto a lounge chair in the middle, beneath a palm tree that cast a hot, irregular checkerboard of shade. I stopped at the bar first, ordered a beer, and came back. The usual ritual.

I was finishing rubbing oil onto my legs when they arrived. A couple in their mid-fifties. He walked past without saying hello, striding toward the last lounge chairs with his towel under his arm. She, on the other hand, came over.

—Sorry to bother you —she said, smiling—. Do you mind if I ask you something?

She wore a yellow sarong over a black two-piece swimsuit, fairly conservative for the place. She had wide hips, a defined waist, and generous breasts that the bra squeezed more than necessary. She smelled of coconut and a soft, almost childlike perfume.

—Of course. Go ahead.

—I always thought this hotel was only for couples —she said, looking around—. Is this the first time you've come alone?

I told her no, that I'd been coming for years and had seen everything: single people, groups of girlfriends, same-sex couples, people who arrived alone and left with someone, people who arrived as a couple and left without speaking. She laughed. She had a low, hoarse laugh that didn't quite fit with the yellow sarong.

—Well, thanks —she said—. Just curious, that's all.

—Patricia —her husband called from the other end, waving a hand.

—Coming —she replied without moving. She held my gaze for a second longer than necessary, then walked away slowly without looking back.

I went back to my book. I left it open on my thigh and looked at the horizon. Two hours passed. The beach gradually filled to fifteen regular guests and, after two, emptied out again. Almost everyone went up to the restaurant. I ordered a ceviche from the passing waiter, ate on my lounge chair, had another beer, and fell asleep to the murmur of the sea and the weight of the heat.

I woke up soaked in sweat. Three-thirty. The beach looked abandoned. I got up, walked to the water, and plunged in. The Pacific was cold that afternoon, almost deep blue, and I swam for a while until I could no longer touch bottom. When I returned to shore, my feet dragging through the sand, I stopped at the bar first to order mineral water with lime.

It was on my way back toward my umbrella that I saw her.

Patricia was alone on her lounge chair, about twenty-five meters from mine. Her husband was nowhere to be seen. I imagined he had gone up to the room for a nap. She had taken off her sarong and the top of her swimsuit. Her tits, free of the bra, were bigger than they had seemed clothed, heavy, with wide, dark nipples the size of coins. She was reclining, her legs barely open, looking at something on her phone.

I passed nearby without stopping, heading toward my spot. I sat down, drank some water, and breathed slowly. I didn't intend to look again. But I did.

Patricia had set the phone facedown on the towel. One hand was now inside the bottom of her bikini. I could see the bulge of her fingers moving in slow circles, pressing against her pubic bone, sinking in and coming out. The other moved very slowly up and down one of her tits, pinching the nipple between her thumb and forefinger, stretching it upward until the skin tightened, then letting it snap back. Her eyes were closed and her mouth slightly open.

I felt myself getting hard without having touched myself. My cock pushed against my belly, swollen, the tip already shining with pre-cum. I lay on my side in an uncomfortable position, trying to hide it. It didn't work. The erection was obvious, and on a nudist beach there was no way to conceal it. I thought about her husband, about what would happen if he came back right then. But her husband wasn't there.

Just watch and hold out.

That's what I told myself. And for a while I managed it. But Patricia's movements were growing broader. The hand inside her bikini could now be seen above the fabric, squeezing her whole pussy with her open palm while her middle finger repeatedly sank inside her, setting the rhythm. Her body tensed in small waves. And at some point, without opening her eyes, she lifted her hips and pulled the garment down to her thighs.

That's when I stopped thinking.

Patricia's pussy was fully exposed in the daylight: thick outer lips darkened by the sun, and inner lips, pinker, peeking out between them, shiny and soaked. She had short-trimmed pubic hair, barely a shadow over her mound. Two of her fingers slid slowly in and out, making a wet smacking sound that reached me where I was. With her thumb she rubbed her clitoris in very small, very precise circles, like someone who knows her own mechanism by heart.

I brought my hand to my cock almost without realizing it. I began gently, looking out toward the sea, as if I were only passing through, as if my own hand were an accident. Patricia hadn't opened her eyes. The beach remained empty. The bartender was inside the hut, out of sight. I gripped my dick in my closed fist and began moving up and down, slowly at first, feeling the skin slide over the glans, feeling a thick drop gather at the tip and run down to my knuckles.

***

It was now or never.

I stood up. My cock, shining with oil and its own fluid, throbbed against my belly, so stiff that it curved upward. I walked the twenty-five meters with blood pounding in my ears. Every step seemed like a new risk: that she would open her eyes and get frightened, that someone would appear from behind a palm tree, that her husband would come down the restaurant stairs at that very moment. None of it happened. I reached her lounge chair.

I stopped two meters away. I spoke in the calmest tone I could manage.

—Do you mind if I join you?

She opened her eyes slowly. She looked me up and down without alarm, stopped at my cock standing in front of her face, and smiled faintly, like someone recognizing what she already knew. A half-smile.

—It's all right —she said, almost in a whisper. And then, without taking her eyes off me—: But don't touch, please. Neither you touching me nor me touching you. For now.

—All right.

I took another step closer. I stood beside the lounge chair, my dick at shoulder height, so close that if she turned her head it would have brushed her cheek. She closed her eyes again. Her hand returned to her pussy, two fingers inside, thumb above, and resumed the rhythm where she'd left off. Mine continued doing its thing, now with a new, firmer rhythm. I tried to arrange myself decently, standing with a slight twist so she could look at me whenever she wanted.

Patricia wet the fingers of her other hand with saliva and ran them over her nipples, leaving them glistening, squeezing them between her fingertips until they stood so hard they looked ready to burst. She began breathing through her mouth. Every so often she opened her eyes for a second, looked straight at my cock, watched my fist slide over the purple glans, then closed them again, pressing her lips together. She said nothing. Neither did I.

I focused on the details. The way her right tit moved, trembling all over, when she pinched her left nipple. The shine of saliva over the dark areola, wrinkled by the cold. The wet sound, no longer imperceptible at all, of her fingers going in and out of her soaked pussy, a low, steady splashing like ripe fruit. The way sand clung to her right heel, braced against the edge of the lounge chair, while her other foot sank into the loose sand and her thighs opened wider, displaying everything without shame. I watched her pussy open around her fingers, watched her inner lips swallow them as she pushed, watched a transparent thread run down her perineum to her dark asshole and from there onto the towel, leaving an ever-growing stain.

I tried to guess when it would happen. Every time she seemed close, her breathing calmed a little and she started over. I regulated myself as best I could. I loosened my hand, tightened it, lengthened the pauses. When I felt my orgasm rising through my balls, I squeezed the base of my cock with my fingers and waited, looking at the sea, counting until it passed. I wanted to come with her, not before.

After what seemed like ten minutes, her breathing changed. It became quick and ragged. She began making small guttural sounds, almost hoarse, keeping them behind her teeth. The fingers inside her pussy moved faster, and her thumb on her clitoris traced increasingly tight circles. She opened her eyes. This time she didn't close them again. She looked straight at me and, without stopping touching herself, raised her free hand and beckoned: two fingers, toward her.

I took the necessary steps. I ended up pressed against the edge of the lounge chair, almost on top of her. She took my cock with a hand still wet with saliva and her own fluids, which had stuck to her when she switched hands. She squeezed it awkwardly, without a clear rhythm: she was too focused on herself. But the sensation of her hot, unfamiliar hand, after so many minutes of my own, was like changing gears. My cock gave a full jerk, a throb I felt in her palm. I covered her hand with mine and imposed the rhythm I needed. Long, even movements, from the glans to the base and back, squeezing hard on the downward stroke, loosening on the way up, until her hot fingers grew accustomed to handling me as she handled her own pussy.

—Like that —she whispered.

It was the only thing she said the entire time. And then it was over.

Her entire body tensed. Her thighs closed over her own hand, trapping her fingers inside. Her back arched a couple of centimeters off the lounge chair, her tits rose hard, and one nipple trembled, completely wrinkled. A short, warm squirt burst from between her fingers and wet the inside of her thigh. She let out a long, deep sigh that seemed to have been building up for weeks. She didn't scream. She didn't moan. She simply emptied herself in silence, squeezing my cock harder with each wave, as if she needed to hold on to something.

I emptied myself right away. The first jet shot out and landed between her tits, white and thick, in a line that reached the hollow of her throat. The second painted her entire belly, and the third pooled in her navel, overflowing. The last spurts fell onto the waistband of the bikini she had pulled down to her thighs, soaking the black fabric with semen. I kept squeezing my dick with my hand over hers, milking out the last drop, which slid over her knuckles. Patricia slowly opened her mouth, looked up at the palm roof, and breathed through her nose, gradually recovering her rhythm. With her free hand, without opening her eyes, she ran two fingers through the puddle in her navel, brought them to her lips, and sucked them slowly, silently, as if tasting something out of curiosity. She didn't let go of my cock for several seconds.

***

I squatted beside the lounge chair. I don't know why I did it. It seemed like the most honest thing in the moment.

—Thank you —I said quietly—. It was beautiful.

I gave her a very brief kiss on the mouth. Barely a brush, not part of the agreement. I lowered myself and ran my tongue slowly in circles over each nipple, gathering some of the semen that had fallen between her tits, savoring the salty mixture of sweat, seawater, and my come. I slowly sucked first her left nipple, then the right, tugging lightly with my teeth, like someone signing beneath an agreement. Patricia laughed softly, her eyes still closed, and ran a hand over the back of my neck for a second before letting me go.

—Go before he comes back —she said.

I stood up, turned around, and walked to the sea. This time I swam far out. I went offshore until the beach grew small, until my lounge chair was a pale spot among the palm trees. I floated on my back, closed my eyes, and let the waves carry me for a long while.

When I returned to the sand, Patricia's lounge chair was empty. The towel, the yellow sarong, the black bra, the phone: nothing. As if it had never happened.

That night I had dinner in the restaurant, sitting at a corner table. I saw her come in with her husband, both dressed in white, both laughing about something he was telling her. Patricia saw me for a second, held my gaze just long enough and no longer, and continued toward her table.

We didn't speak again during the three days.

On Sunday morning, while I was paying the bill at reception, I saw her leave with her suitcase. Her husband was carrying both of them. She wore a man's shirt, much too large, and enormous dark sunglasses. As she passed me, without slowing or looking at me, she dropped a folded napkin on the counter beside my card. She kept walking.

The napkin had a single line, written in hurried handwriting: “Do it yourself next time.”

I stared at the sentence until the receptionist cleared his throat. I put it in the back pocket of my pants. I kept it for a while, inside a book, until it was lost in a move. But the sentence remained.

Sometimes, when I pass by some beach and see someone touching their hair beneath an umbrella, I remember Patricia. And once again, I understand what she meant to tell me.